Bullying, characterized as a manifestation of school violence and anti-social conduct, constitutes a global concern (Johansson et al., 2022) that adversely affects individuals' mental and physical health, interpersonal skills, and educational performance. Within the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it has been reported that, on average, 8% of young learners are subjected to bullying on a regular basis (OECD, 2023). The incidence of bullying experiences among children aged 11, 13, and 15 years in Europe and North America varies significantly, ranging from 5% to 70% (Due et al., 2005). Due to high prevalence and detrimental effects of bullying, one of the purposes of this study is to contribute current discussions about bully victims by investigating the detrimental outcomes of bullying.

While the effect of school bullying victimization on student well-being and achievement emotions are well researched, the literature lacks its effect on epistemic emotions. Pekrun (2024) recently incorporated epistemic emotions into control-value theory (CVT) and highlighted the need for further examination of epistemic emotions across cultures. Thus, another purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of bullying victimization on 15-year old students’ curiosity and frustration in order to determine its potential role as a distal/environmental variable for these specific emotions. These epistemic emotions are classified as positive activating (i.e., curiosity) and negative activating (i.e., frustration) epistemic emotions in CVT (Pekrun, 2024). To further determine these effects across cultures, analyses will be conducted on Nordic (Finland and Denmark), Central Europe (Germany and Netherlands) and Southern Europe (Italy and Serbia) countries separately. One of the pitfalls of bullying research is unethical assignment of students to treatment and control groups. Using nationally representative Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) datasets, propensity score matching method will be conducted to establish causal results conditional on balanced covariates.

The empirical evidence obtained from this study are intended to inform policy makers, researchers and practitioners about the prevalence of bullying in schools, its effects on epistemic emotions, and its potential role in CVT.

Answers to the following research questions are sought in this study:

1. Does bullying victimization influence 15-year old’s curiosity?
2. Does bullying victimization influence 15-year old’s frustration?
3. To what extent these effects differ in Nordic, Central Europe and Southern Europe countries?

Nationally representative PISA datasets of Finland, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Serbia will be used for this study. Bullying victimization is measured by six 4-point Likert-type items (e.g., “In past 12 months, how often: Other students left me out of things on purpose”) ranging from 1 ‘never or almost never’ to 4 ‘Once a week or more’. Once the univariate structure of this factor is established through confirmatory factor analysis and reliability evidence, a dichotomous treatment variable of bullying victimization will be created (1 ‘Yes’ and 0 ‘No’). Intellectual curiosity is measured by 3 items (e.g., “I am curious about many different things”) with responses ranging from 1 ‘Strongly disagree’ to 5 ‘Strongly agree’. Students’ negative activating emotion, frustration, is measured by 2 items (e.g., “I get frustrated when I have to learn the details of a topic”) with responses ranging from 1 ‘Strongly disagree’ to 5 ‘Strongly agree’. After establishing the univariate structure of these factors, a composite variable will be created. Bullying victimization will be the treatment variable for PSM analyses; curiosity and frustration will be outcome variables while balancing potentially impactful covariates on the hypothetical intervention. PSM method facilitates the estimation of generalizable treatment effects by balancing samples from large datasets (Guo & Fraser, 2015). In PSM, bullying can be conceptualized as a variable analogous to a treatment in a randomized controlled trial, enabling the establishment of treatment and control groups based on exposure to this condition. In the context of PISA, where students disclose their bullying experiences prior to the data collection, the experience of bullying functions as a theoretical intervention that satisfies the temporal precedence criterion necessary for identifying causal relationships. Furthermore, to eliminate alternative explanations for the observed relationship between the treatment and its outcomes, treatment and control groups are balanced on covariates through PSM that might impact the selection into the treatment conditions. Prior to establishing causal relationships, PSM method requires the fulfillment of several assumptions: i) strong ignorability of treatment assignment condition and ii) stable unit treatment value assumption (Guo & Fraser, 2015). The validity of these assumption can be ascertained by evaluating the balance of covariates between treatment and control groups, observing the common support region of the distributions of propensity scores within the groups, and conducting sensitivity analyses (Powell et al., 2019; Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1983). The significance and magnitude of the results for the selected countries will be compared using Stata.

According to CVT, environmental variables influence emotions through individuals' perceived control and perceived value. Control appraisals encompass anticipatory beliefs, attributions, and self-perceptions of competence regarding achievement-related activities and their subsequent outcomes, whereas value appraisals are defined by the intrinsic and extrinsic significance ascribed to these activities and outcomes. These cognitive appraisals serve as the essential predictors of emotions, functioning as proximal antecedents, while distal antecedents are posited to exert an influence on the emotions through the mediation of these cognitive appraisals (Pekrun & Perry, 2014). According to Pekrun (2024), while curiosity is associated with control and value appraisals, frustration is mostly depends on perceived value of the outcome. In a context wherein bullying constitutes an imminent or a prospective danger due to its potential recurrence, individuals may reorient their long-term educational objectives as the imperative of self-preservation takes precedence. Therefore, frustration may be significantly influenced by school bullying. On the other hand, curiosity depends on the incongruence of control and value appraisals. If the magnitude of both appraisals decrease, the effect of bullying on curiosity may be less compared to its effect on frustration. Expected and unexpected findings and their cross-cultural variation in European countries will be discussed within the CVT framework. The findings are intended to contribute to current anti-bullying initiatives, policies, and research by providing empirical causal evidence. Furthermore, the findings will contribute to CVT regarding the role of bullying within the CVT framework regarding its effect on epistemic emotions across European countries, with three different cultural subgroups.

Due, P., Holstein, B. E., Lynch, J., Diderichsen, F., Gabhain, S. N., Scheidt, P., & Currie, C. (2005). Bullying and symptoms among school-aged children: international comparative cross-sectional study in 28 countries. The European Journal of Public Health, 15(2), 128-132. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cki105 Guo, S., & Fraser, M. W. (2015). Propensity score analysis: Statistical methods and applications (Volume 11, 2. Edition). SAGE publications. Johansson, S., Myrberg, E., & Toropova, A. (2022). School bullying: Prevalence and variation in and between school systems in TIMSS 2015. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 74, 101178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2022.101178 OECD (2023). PISA 2022 insights and interpretations. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA%202022%20Insights%20and%20Interpretations.pdf Pekrun, R. (2024). Control-value theory: From achievement emotion to a general theory of human emotions. Educational Psychology Review, 36, 83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09909-7 Pekrun, R., & Perry, R. P. (2014). Control-value theory of achievement emotions. In R. Pekrun & L. Linnenbrink-Garcia (Eds.), International Handbook of Emotions in Education (pp. 120-141). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203148211.ch7 Powell, M. G., Hull, D. M., & Beaujean, A. A. (2019). Propensity score matching for education data: Worked examples. The Journal of Experimental Education, 88(1), 145–164. Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70(1),41–55.